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Suspected MS-13 gang member gets six years in prison for beating his girlfriend

Milton Perez-Rodriquez, 36, is sentenced after pleading guilty to guilty to second-degree assault and causing serious bodily injury

Suspected MS-13 member Milton Perez-Rodriquez will spend six years in prison for beating a woman unconscious while he was driving her in a vehicle.
Special to the Daily

EAGLE — A suspected member of the MS-13 gang will spend six years in prison for beating his girlfriend.

Milton Perez-Rodriquez, 36, was arrested in Vail on New Year’s Day 2019.

While driving a vehicle, Perez-Rodriquez hit his victim four times in the face — apparently without provocation — knocking her unconscious, according to Vail police reports. When the pair returned to the Vail residence of Perez-Rodriquez, the woman was able to flee and called the police.



Police and paramedics were on the scene in moments. Police arrested Perez-Rodriquez, while paramedics attended to the woman and transported her to the hospital where she was treated for her injuries.

Perez-Rodriquez pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and causing serious bodily injury, a Class 4 felony. He was sentenced in District Court this week to six years in state prison and three years of parole.

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“Violent attacks are never justified. We are we are truly grateful to the victim who not only survived this horrific incident, but had the courage to come forward and identify her attacker,” Bruce Brown, 5th Judicial District Attorney, said in a statement. “Her bravery and the hard work of law enforcement ensures this violent man cannot harm anyone for many years to come.”

Law enforcement authorities say they believe Perez-Rodriquez to be a citizen of El Salvador who has ties to Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), a street gang based in El Salvador that operates criminal enterprises throughout the United States.

Perez-Rodriquez is the second alleged MS-13 gang member that local authorities have dealt with this year.

ICE officers in Eagle County arrested Oscar Antonio Rosas-Alas, 24, on March 19, 2018. Federal immigration officials hung onto him in Denver until March 1, 2019, when agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations put him on a plane with other deportees and sent him back to El Salvador. Interpol had charged Antonio Rosas-Alas with aggravated extortion charges, according to a release from the Department of Homeland Security.

Rosas-Alas entered the United States illegally in 2016 near McAllen, Texas. Eventually, he made his way to Colorado and the Eagle County side of the Roaring Fork Valley.

As he was being arrested by Deputy Josiah Maner, Rosas-Alas took a swing at Maner and ran, according to Maner’s report of the incident. Rosas-Alas tripped on the rocky ground after he vaulted over the outfield fence. Maner chased him down, tackled him and handcuffed him.

Interpol’s warrant asserted that Rosas-Alas is associated with MS-13.

What is MS-13?

MS-13 is one of some 33,000 gangs that the FBI recognizes. It accounts for just a fraction of the 1.4 million gang members nationwide, according to the National Gang Intelligence Center.

The Mara Salvatrucha gang originated in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, created by Salvadoran immigrants after that country’s civil wars. MS-13 gang members tend to be among the most savage as they carry out racketeering, extortion, money laundering, prostitution, drug trafficking and other illegal activities. Besides rapes and kidnappings and violent assaults, MS-13 has been tied to some horrific murders, according to the National Gang Intelligence Center.

In 2017, the Washington Post reported that as many as 10 MS-13 members in Maryland lured a man into a park, stabbed him more than 100 times, decapitated him and cut out his heart. The Post also reported on an 18-year-old Virginia woman who confessed to killing a 15-year-old girl in retaliation for her boyfriend’s murder. The 18-year-old stabbed the younger girl 13 times and videotaped the murder to show to MS-13 higher-ups.

According to ICE data, the agency removed or returned 258,085 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2018. Enforcement and Removal Operations arrested 158,581 illegal immigrants, 90 percent of whom had criminal convictions, pending criminal charges, or previously issued final orders. The overall arrest figure represents an 11 percent increase over fiscal year 2017.


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